


Spine of the world

by Penstrokes



Category: Super Science Friends
Genre: Gen, Transistor AU, tags will update when relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstrokes/pseuds/Penstrokes
Summary: Marie and Pierre have finally made years of hard work pay off. Their scientific progress has been recognized and they've been invited to talk about their work.Or that's how it was meant to go. Surviving an assassination attempt by the Camerata, Marie finds herself alone and voiceless. Her only clue is the sword- the transistor- that carries her husband's voice and what they know of the Camerata.Meanwhile, the Process is starting to step out of line without the Transistor, transforming the city into the canvas it always wanted to be.





	Spine of the world

**Author's Note:**

> I dedicate this AU to my friend Mads.

Marie Curie hurried out of the science building, pressing herself up against the wall in wait. The open air contrasted sharply with the hot, closed panic that had taken place just moments before. This was no accident, it had been a trap. The Camerata had their sights on her from who knows when. How long had they tracked her efforts, her movements? 

 

It had been Pierre who had helped her step into the light by giving her the platform she needed to flourish. It was also Pierre who had pushed her away and urged her to run for it. Marie didn’t like abandoning that which she held dear, much less those whom she loved. She knew better than to waste his sacrifice for her. So she ran and didn’t look back. Her throat burned and her sides ached as minutes crawled by. It was far too soon to go back and find out what had become of Pierre alas the knowledge of being alone and hunted turned every second into eternity. Waiting for what came next, who popped around the corner- or behind her- an agonizing trickle. An agitated need for that moment to come and get it over with desperate hope that she wouldn’t be found fed the fear.

 

The only way to fight that fear, as Marie had long since learned, was to act. Inactivity would only make the body grow idle and the mind wrapped in the never ending what could bes and what ifs. Slowly, she stepped away from the side of the decorated building. She and many other scientists had viewed it as a landmark, a beacon for the furthering of mankind through discovery and experimentation. This sanctuary of knowledge and ideas was now tainted. Curie could only wonder how many others had been ambushed here as well. 

 

Sneaking in through a backdoor, she walked quietly. Her blue dress fluttered softly with the breeze  from outside. Conversations filtered through the air from people in other rooms, oblivious to the attempted murder in another secluded room just like this. 

 

One attempted, but what about the other? What about Pierre? She kept her eyes open and her ears alert. Marie was just one woman up against the elite quartet of culture and technology. They had wanted her before, they’d want her again.

 

Corridor after corridor came up empty with only the sound of her own feet and the humming of the lights to keep her company. 

* * *

 

“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Marie, where are you?” Pierre’s voice came to her, faint as it was her spirits soared. A sign that he was alive. Waiting for him to call out again, pleading for an answer, for any sign of life as her only guide, she found herself tracing that sound. 

 

‘Just a little longer.’ She thought, she dared not speak out loud, not until she had him by her side again. 

 

He must have gotten away, would the Camerata let him live otherwise? Impossible. 

 

“Please, someone, anyone. I don’t know where I am.” Pierre was so close yet now she worried for him. 

 

‘He just got turned around, that’s all.’ Marie wasn’t sure what else could illicit such a worried reaction from him.  

 

Her heart sank when she approached the source of the sound, the very hallway she’d last seen him. Where she’d first escaped. She had found Pierre but not how she’d hoped. His body lay lifeless. The sword she had only caught a glimpse of beforehand jutted out of him almost offensively so. A piece of...metal, if she had to guess, protruding from Pierre, having stolen him from her. 

 

“Marie! It’s you, it has to be. I don’t know what happened, but I need you to get me out.” Pierre’s voice emanated from the sword loud and clear. Almost as if he were still alive. Her hand hovered over it’s handle, scrutinizing it.

 

‘What are you?’ She intended to ask with a voice that was no longer there. The lack of sound shook her. First she had lost Pierre, only to find herself facing this imposter who used his voice. Now she had lost the her greatest asset- her voice. It was the medium in which she could propose ideas, could argue her case. Words were the only way to let oneself be known unhindered.

 

“Marie, I can’t see you. Where are you? Speak to me, please.” Pierre, no, the sword, was desperate for a response. Marie could not give him one though she sorely wanted to. She reached forth and wrenched the sword from her husband’s body. It felt heavy but not impossible to carry around. It was mostly blue, it’s ‘blade’ if you could call it that, was semi translucent. A turquoise color, with what seemed to be gold circuits beneath the semi opaque surface. A single red eye gazed upon her. 

 

_ User signed on: Marie Curie _

_ Process Status: Uncontrolled _

 

She had to get out of here but she could not bear to leave his body forgotten like this neither could she afford to try and move him. 

 

“Marie, we need to get out of here. The Camerata might still be around.” The sword urged her on, making up her mind for her. She planted the sword back down into the carpet, bending down to move his body to somewhere she could find it later. She was going to come back for him, she would give him the burial he deserved. Moving him was difficult and she ignored the sword for the time being. There was no way she’d get him all the way outside. Marie settled instead for shoving him into a closet and locking the door. 

 

“You didn’t have to do that for me. It was very nice, though.” The sword mourned, watching her with it’s one red eye in the center. Begrudgingly, she wrenched it from the ground and moved forward. 

 

Marie left with the sword, only half listening to the voice of her dead husband. She’d get to the bottom of at least finding out more about the sword. If not with spoken words, then with written. Marie would just need to find a terminal or a piece of paper. 

 

How hard could that be?

* * *

  
  


The two walked in silence, with Pierre having no choice but to gaze up at the ‘sky’ of where he’d found himself so far. ‘The Country’, where people came not to visit, but to stay. He was not alone, there were countless others here with him. Some had moved on best they could, while others lingered still scornful about their passing.

 

Pierre was still shaken by his sudden death but he had just enough time to come to terms with at least some of it. Just enough to keep him from drowning in shock and grief, both for himself and for Marie. He had always known Marie to have a hardened mask in which to hide her true thoughts and feelings. That wasn’t why he was growing nervous at her continued coldness towards him. It was the way she looked at him, as if they were strangers. 

 

The clean yet gilded buildings and walls of the outside were as he’d remembered them. Decorated with trendy guardrails, the rest of the city could be seen from here normally. All the lights and waterways below. The parks, bridges, the entire look of city was only temporary. The flavor of the week according to the whims of the residents of Cloudbank. By some wonderous method, the landscape was always cycling from one trend to another. The want of parks, waterways and bridges, until the collective hand wave that was the popular vote took them away. From the style of the buildings and even the weather itself lay at the collective control of millions of people who called Cloudbank home. 

 

The city, like any other, had it’s own myriad of influential voices. Artists, musicians, politicians. Scientists and engineers. Once in a while someone would go missing, delicious gossip and rumors for the populous. The fans grieved, leaving letters and notes. Some kept little digital shrines on the internet to those bright stars and minds recently gone.  The ones who really grieved , were those who had known them intimately. Parents, lovers and especially children. No explanation, no trace of their fate aside from that they were no longer there with them. 

 

Posters of the upcoming events were plastered on the turquoise wall. Musical performances, political debates...the science lectures of which the Curies had been invited to speak. A trap in the open so cleverly disguised. Had the Camerata targeted others this way too?

 

Marie stood there at the wall, her fingers lingering on the picture of the science poster. Had they intended to go after others speaking there as well? How much had been planned? Why Marie? Had they intended to go after both Curies? The more Pierre thought about it the more questions and uncertainties arose. The others that he found lingering, he’d ask them. They had to know.

 

He was about to call to Marie when something peculiar caught their attention. The clattering of robotic legs, there were several of them walking around unbothered by anything but their seemingly self appointed task of blasting away at the wall with it’s white beam of light emitting from it’s single red eye. 

 

‘DZZZHNN.’ A white ray of light blasted the wall from one, while another blasted the floor. Slowly the color began to fade, the details smoothed out until it was a flat white surface. Blank. Lifeless.

 

“What is that?” Pierre asked, a terror slowly rising in him. This steady destruction was not one he’d associated with the word ‘destruction’ but the erasal started something in him. An almost instinctual reaction.

 

The robots seemed to react to them too, as they turned from their busy work. They quickly scutteled towards the two of them, beaming their deadly lasers at them both. The two dodged behind a white pillar that had been ...created if one could call creation from destruction. 

* * *

  
  


Marie pressed her back against the wall of the pillar, the otherworldly smoothness of the construct sent a chill down her spine. It was almost soft, a strange kind of cool to boot on the outside. The faintly sterile, plastic smell emanating from it was almost sickly, distracting her. It was only the staccato clacking of the robotic legs coming her way that made her snap to attention once more. Once more, the racing fear of being found, of being  _ hunted  _ came over her, albeit not as strongly. The first wave of fear and panic had subsided. The rage of anger and the fatigue of her earlier scare weighed in her bones. 

 

Marie sprung to her feet, swinging the sword at the robot. A sense of warmth radiated from her palms when she did so….and thus a green wave of energy rushed towards her target. Black spots and minute fractures covered the formerly white and smooth machine as well as the blocks besides them both. 

 

Marie may have been stunned, but she could ponder, well, all of this, later. Swinging the sword once more, she unleashed another wave of radiation, then another. Each blow that met the robot’s surface made it grow darker, the cracks growing deeper until-

 

It fell apart. A single red ‘cell’ of sorts sat it the robot’s place. Small, white, also bearing a single red eye. It rotated slowly in place. Marie came closer to it, watching as it became absorbed into the sword.

 

“Oh!” The sword gasped in surprise, echoing Marie’s own reaction. 

 

‘DZZZHNN.’ The other robot made itself known, it’s laser making contact with her body. A careless mistake.

 

She cried out silently in pain as it penetrated her to her core. Slowly spreading throughout her chest, she found it hard to breathe. 

 

“Marie, quick, you’ve got to snap out of it.” ‘Pierre’ practically screamed in terror. Marie didn’t need to be told twice. Her movements were sluggish but frantic. With every ounce of desperation, she brought her sword down upon the ground, once again unleashing that strange energy. The robot staggered backwards, the beam broken. Marie could breathe once more.

 

A split second of reprieve. The smallest moment to decide what to do.

 

Marie brought the sword down, unleashing another wave of radiation, further disabling the robot. Scuttling backward and off balance, she dealt the killing blow. Watching as it disintegrated into the strange red eyed ‘cell’ as she’d call it, she stood still, listening for anymore of those machines.

 

She heard only the noise of the city. Passing cars and vehicles. The song of jingles and engines and people talking carried along the wind. Her own breathing. 

 

She paused to look over at the pillars where the ground once was, contemplating if she ought to change it back. Marie took one last look at the mess, the ground beneath it still a featureless white. 

 

No, she had more pressing matters to attend to. Maybe she would come back for it later.

 

Marie headed for the gate up ahead and walked forward. She had a job to do. 

  
  



End file.
